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After a two week hiatus, I managed to crank out a *very tiny* finish for this week's Project QUILTING challenge. I took my word of the year and turned it into a quilt. Mostly my technique was slice and insert and it was all a bit of planned improv, I wanted skinny lines and to make all the letters about the same height as the E which I finished first.

The strips finish at about 1/8" wide and the quilt finished at 2 1/4" x 9". It ties my Patchwork City mini mini quilt for the smallest quilt I've ever made. Fabrics are Alison Glass Kaleidoscope: Iris, Opal, Aqua Marine, Dragonfly, Beetle, and Peacock. It was pieced with Aurifil 50wt White (#2024) and quilted with Aurifil 50wt Medium Grey (#1158). I quilted it by walking foot echoing the letters, then I pillowcase bound it. By the way, my daughter wasn't very impressed. She told me, "It's hardly a quilt. It doesn't even have binding!" Here are a few process pictures to go with my finished photo above.

It's been a busy week of sewing. Curves and Swoon blocks and Project QUILTING, oh my! I mentioned this week's Project QUILTING challenge to my daughter and she made a quilt for the challenge, too! I'm so proud of her and really enjoyed her excitement. This week's challenge was to make a quilt with only red, white, and blue (though we didn't have to use all three). I love the fairly open ended theme and endless possibilities. Early on I decided that I would limit to blue and white since I don't have much in the way of red fabric. I've admired these temperature quilt blocks by Cheri and decided on some improv triangles for this challenge. I chose a dark blue solid for the main portion of the blocks and was able to cut sixteen 4" squares from my scrap of fabric. Of the two coordinating prints I chose, I was most limited on the crosshatch, so those were cut into small strips. The units went together quickly. My initial plan was to use a straight set layout with all blocks in the same direction like this first photo. Then I played with potential layouts and decided I'd go with the fourth one.

In piecing my rows together two rows got switched and I didn't realize it until I was done with the quilt top. With the other deadlines this week I decided I didn't have time to unsew and I would just stick with the happy accident that happened when I swapped rows 3 and 4. I went simple with the quilting by using Aurifil 50wt Medium Delft Blue (#2783) for diagonal walking foot quilting. My final design decision was to bind in solid Kona Red. My daughter and I both used this fabric for our binding, so that saved me some time by making it all at once. The quilt was machine bound with Aurifil 50wt Red (#2250). Since I pieced with Aurifil 50wt White (#2024), I not only used red, white, and blue fabric for this quilt, but also red, white, and blue thread as well!

Last Sunday was the beginning of season 10 of Project QUILTING, a series of one-week quilt challenges. I've participated for the past two years and this year I'm a sponsor. The theme for this week's challenge is Hope Springs Eternal. Well... I was out of town for the first 4 days of the one week challenge, and then I had to spend Thursday and Friday making serious progress on a quilt deadline that I'll be posting on my blog tonight. This means I didn't even have time to think too much about this challenge until yesterday.

I had a hard time with this theme. In the end, with 14 hours until the deadline (including overnight... and I needed to sleep) I had hope I could crank out a small quilt. How's that for hope springing eternal? My initial goal was a mug rug, then I decided on placemat sized, and in the end I trimmed it to 18.5" x 18.5". I'll be linking up with less than 15 minutes to spare.

I used a lovely piece of hand dyed fabric from my friend Mel Beach and my Planned Improv: All About Angles technique. After demoing my technique on Wednesday (7 times!) I'm excited to work on some All About Angles projects.

I used two sizes of Aurifil Light Leaf Green (#1147) for this quilt. It was pieced and bound with Aurifil 50wt and quilted with Auriful 80wt. I hadn't used 80wt and really love the fine line it creates. It's certainly quilting that's all about the texture and not the color. I chose a fast motif from my recent class with Christa Watson. It's way fancier than a basic meander, but not much more difficult.

Here's the basic breakdown of how I made the quilt start to finish in under 14 hours.